Wednesday May 5th, 2010

Your prompt, on this numerically pleasing 05/05/10, is: life changing.

Tie it in to Cinco de Mayo as you wish :)

Mine:

I have a handful of important dates coming up and it's about time I got around to sharing them with you. So let me get to it, in chronological order even.

June 18th - This will be my last day of work at BC Hydro. And hopefully my last day of work in a cubicle... ever.

June 25th - We're packing up our stuff and moving to Osoyoos. Initially we will be staying at Kat's parents house but we'll be renovating the cabin in the orchard and moving into that as soon as we can manage. Then we'll save up to build a proper house on another section of her parents 20 acre property.

July 31st - Wedding day. I suppose I already shared this date with you :)

So what's the plan for work? In the spring, summer, and fall we'll be focusing on growing and selling vegetables (and helping sell Kat's parents fruit) at farmers markets, restaurants, and stores. Kat was doing this last summer and I went to help as much as I could. Even with the long road trips I really enjoyed it.

In the winter Kat is going to teach school part time and teach yoga as much as she can while I... we'll see :)

The plan is to find some part time work to keep the money coming in and spend the rest of my time focusing on my writing. Failing the part time job thing... I'll just focus on the writing. It's also possible that I might get some consulting work out of my contacts at BC Hydro, which would be both excellent and flexible (possibly excellent because it's flexible).

This blog will of course continue no matter what. But in addition to this one I'm putting together a new blog for the farm business and I'll be sure to share that with you once I have it looking vaguely presentable.

This is all very exciting and scary and completely, utterly life changing. I can't wait to get out of the city and live in a wide open space with fresh air. Working outdoors is something I've wanted to do for a long, long time. I got a small taste of that last summer with my weekend trips to visit Kat in Osoyoos but now I get to completely immerse myself in it.

4 comments:

Cripes, sounds drastic... and exciting! I'll probably be repeating myself later on, but best of luck to y'all!

I'm kind of at one of those life-changing points at the moment myself: I'll be graduating high school at the end of June. Which is both a scary and exciting thought. I mean, this idea of graduating high school and going onto something completely different (so they say) felt very far away even last year. I still can't completely grasp the thought that I'm going to college (let alone the fact that I actually know which one), and I graduate in, what, a month and a half? Not even?

Still, it's exciting. I'm going onto something different come the end of August: new place, new folks, those kinds of things. But of course I'll have some of that familiar coming along with me: my music, some reading, my writing, and of course my personal brand of insanity.

I'm also giving my senior recital in the middle of July, for which I'm very excited as well. I get to play my huge Mendellsohn work that I had for a little over a year, plus I'm resurrecting a few pieces I played on my first recital, including a shortish Mendelssohn that gave me an insanely hard time a few years back, so much so that my teacher and I toyed around with the idea of dropping it. But something made me want to keep it, and boy amd I glad I did: I played dang near perfectly that May night four years ago.

Wow. This is quite a bit. Hopefully not too much...

Anyway, one question for you, 'Loo: how do you pronounce the place to which you're moving?

Wow, so much going on in everybody's lives! It almost makes me wish for my soul back so I could try living as a human again... nah, I'm happy as I am.@g2 then, that all sounds like a whole bunch of (slightly scary) fun! Good luck with college, I'm sure it'll turn out to be both more and less than you imagine it to be. And the senior recital sounds like something I'd have liked to have attended, were I not on a different continent. Probably teaching awkward customers how to use recalcitrant software.

@Marc: ah, finally a full explanation of the renovation prompt! I'm glad I'm out in Vancouver this weekend then, as I very much doubt work will ever send me to Osoyoos. At least, not unless you decide to open up a large bookmaking operation and purchase our software.... Congrats on the last day on the job, and the last day in the rat race, too, by the sounds of it. I sincerely hope that you make the writing work, if only because I'd like to be able to have your books on my shelf to remind me of when you weren't too important to acknowledge peons like me :) It sounds like you've got things pretty well planned out, and that's definitely the best way to start.

Oh, I suppose I should make use of the prompt while I'm here!

Life changing

A rearrangement,A reordering, reorganising,Putting things in different placesAnd wondering if they can stay the same.Permutations, dealt out two by two,By an invisible hand, a dealer whoIs more powerful and less presentThan anyone you've ever met.Clotho has spun your thread,And Lachesis weaves it through the tapestry.The warp and weft of her eternal loomDraws the design of your life together.Thus it is forever.And all these things, brought tidilyTo an apex, a brilliant, shining point,Conspire now to give you this one perfect moment,And life changes, as life always must.Succeed.

Good luck, Marc in all these changes coming in your life. Sounds like you'll be busy for a while.

For the prompt (a prequel to the dragon flying post a while ago -- I am doing more with it, this isn't the end by any means):

The dragons awoke as the sun spilled into the sunrise facing cave mouth. They had slept like usual, all curled into one big scaly ball. They stretched into the rising sun and began to crawl out of the cave.

Erithyima, the matriarch, said, "I hope Christalos comes home today. She has been gone long on her moving about. I wish she would come home and be a grown dragon."

The others murmured agreement and began to prepare the morning meal, lighting a fire in the pit and opening the grain bins.

A tuneless droning sound began. The dragons looked at each other in bewilderment and confusion. It was a very odd sound for a sun shining, clear morning.

Two legged beings rushed into the clearing, spinning in rapid circles, hooded cloaks swirling around their lithe bodies. They flung dust in the dragons' faces, and before they could draw breath for fire, they fell to the ground with heavy thumps, choking. There was silence.

The two legged ones pushed back their hoods. The leader spoke. "Good. Nessie, put out their little fire. No need for a wildfire." She smiled. "Don't want to ruin this prime farmland here. The rest of you, come with me. Let's start surveying our new property."

She strode off, the others scurrying in her wake. One stayed to douse the fire. She turned for the water bucket. One old dragon, unseen by her, forced open an eye and saw her and knew her for human. Then he fainted again.

The "Rules"

One: If you do the daily practice please feel free to share it in the comments - the best part of this concept is seeing the different places people go from the same starting point. I do my best to leave some feedback on all comments.

Two: Anyone can write. Everyone should. So write!

Three: This is daily writing practice. Practice. Not daily writing perfection. So let loose and write!

Four: Write for five minutes, an hour, all afternoon, whatever works. Just write!

Five: There are no deadlines. In fact, I love being surprised by a take on a prompt that's a few days old!

Pages

About Me

I'm a 39 year old writer, farmer, and father to two boys living in Osoyoos, BC, Canada.
What do I write? Poetry, short stories, children's books, and I now have first drafts finished for two novels.
Why do I write? Because not writing isn't an option. I get antsy if I get close to the end of a day without having written something.
Daily Writing Practice is my main blog - come have a visit, won't you?